delta79 said:
Ok, I have leant the coaster term for what I called a guild dolly.
It has lots of names. I just call it that as it makes the most sense when designing rides for RCT3. A Zero Cart is the one at the front but with no people in.
Nick said:
I believed that the zero car was used for aesthetic purposes only. That's clearly wrong!
Still, I still think the Eurofighter's front is still a sort of zero car anyway. I define it as something that changes the front car from the other ones. On B&M's this is probably false, but with other manufactures it could be true. I guess that isn't the true meaning of "zero car" though.
Well the odd thing about a Euro-Fighter is that technically it isn't even a train. It has more in common with a Wild Mouse than it does a standard train. Let me try and find explain it visually...
Have you ever been on a Wild Mouse and watched the wheels as it goes around a corner? If you have you'll have noticed something quite clever that allows it to take impossibly sharp turns. Let’s say you're looking at the front wheels and take a sharp corner to the left. These front wheels are on a pivot so that as they hit the curve the left wheel moves backwards so that it is closer to you and as a result pushes the right wheel further away. The same happens on the back set of wheels but in reverse so that the wheels on the left are almost touching while the ones on the right are as far away as possible.
You can just about see this on the below image of Matterhorn Blitz:
See what I mean? (just nod and go along with me if you don’t
)
No other ride type turns like this... except for the Euro-Fighters. Unfortunately finding a picture of a Euro-Fighter performing a turn like this is even harder as the motion is so slight you’d barely notice it. But next time you're watching Saw notice that when the train comes into the final break run it makes a very quick snapping motion. This is the wheels coming back together.
So what does this mean? Basically it means the Euro-Fighter acts as a single cart vehicle. But quite clearly it isn’t because the front and back carriages are separated:
Well they are but yet again they're not. This is the second thing that sets Euro-Fighters apart and makes them such a dynamic little ride. The gap in-between each row of seats only allows for one type of motion; rolling motion from left to right. In a way Nick is right in calling the front seat a Zero Cart because this is the same way many Zero-Carts are joined to make the ride stable. Only as I explained before calling it a Zero Cart isn’t the right word because it actually has people in it.
That’s why I find it easier to think of a Euro-Fighter as a Wild Mouse that has been cut in half.
This is also the reason that sticking two Euro-Fighters together simply won't work. You'd end up with two very dynamic carts joined like a normal roller coaster which would restrict a lot of the movement. Exactly how they are going to get around this I look forward to finding out.
I hope that’s made things a bit clearer. But, probably not :-\
